This is the Marian dress, which is yet another brilliantly written pattern from Taiga Hilliard. Taiga writes her patterns very well, they are easy to follow for American, British and any other knitters.

My favourite part about the patterns is that there is absolutely minimal sewing at the end. for this one it was just adding crochet hoops for the buttons and sewing in ends, and then sewing on buttons, that was it! Brilliant!

I had these sweet little buttons in my stash, they fit perfectly, matching the lacy pattern down the middle of the front and back panels of the dress. Although I don’t think they are very easy to close…oops.

It’s so sweet how the detail of that lacy pattern fans out to create the fuller skirt.

I made this for a really old friend, who is actually the daughter of my kindergarten teacher. She was kind enough to send me some pictures of her sweet little girl wearing her dress.

A good friend, who has two children, both of whom I childminded a couple of years ago, saw this post and asked if I could knit her daughter a tunic too. I was only too happy to oblige.

It’s funny really, I’ve had this pattern in my Ravelry queue for ages and once I knit one of these, I then got another order for one and made one for a friend as a gift in the space of two months.

I went back to my DROPS Belle yarn, mainly because I love the composition of it, the cotton, linen and viscose mix has a lovely feel to it. It’s really nice to knit up as it’s very soft, but the finished garment really holds it’s shape.

My friend picked the colours, and they work very well together and really suit her little girl!

I decreased less stitches before the cuff of the sleeve as they seemed a little tight on the previous version that I knitted.

I love the pockets on this tunic, they work so well, especially with the contrast. In fact, I have taken a shine to pockets and a garment I finished recently (my own pattern), just needed pockets to complete it!

The buttons I had in my stash, but they came from TextileGarden, and don’t they match perfectly?

My friend was kind enough to send me a picture of her gorgeous girl wearing her new tunic, isn’t she sweet?

My best friend’s daughter was last Saturday and as I made her daughter a dress for her first birthday last year, I also wanted to make her one this year.

I picked this lovely tunic/jumper/dress that I’ve had in my queue for a while on Ravelry. The sizing was a bit too big, especially as my friend’s daughter is petite. So I went down in needle size from what the pattern recommended and used a different yarn too.

I used the combination of this lovely old pink and light blue in the DROPS Belle yarn, which is such a wonderful combination of cotton, viscose and linen. It’s wonderful to knit with too.

My good friend from German group recently had her second child, a gorgeous little girl. She and I have been through a few things together, so I knew that I wanted to knit something special for her new arrival.

For some reason I had a grey and yellow combination in my head, but when it actually came around to it I picked these pinks for the little tunic.

A little while ago I asked my mum to have a look at Garnstudio to pick out a design that she wanted me to knit for her. She picked this lovely linen tunic, for which I used exactly the yarn that is mentioned in the pattern: Drops Lin. It was really easy to knit, but at first I was a little worried that it was a little rough around the edges. As the skirt was knitted with quite large needles it meant that the stitches were quite lose. This is not something I’m used to as I always knit quite tightly, but it seemed to work well.
Following the skirt I knitted some pleats for the first time ever. This was quite well explained in the Drops Design pattern, but I also found my Ultimate Knitting Bible that I recently bought (thanks to my friend Dom) extremely helpful. It explains very nicely how to do pretty much anything in knitting, how amazing is that?
I made the smallest size of the dress as my mum is quite petite, and at first I was a little worried that it might be too small and that it wouldn’t fit her. But I didn’t have worried, it fits her perfectly and looks nicely elegant.
I’m loving the fact that I’m starting to try out more and more new patterns as it is a perfect way to enhance my skills. I’ve still got a huge list of other things to finish, including a number of baby blankets (which take very long, compared to small baby clotes), some baby booties (nice and quick), a cardigan for myself (a new pattern) and a baby dress for a friend.
I finished the dress off with a nice crochet border and of course my trusted label.